To my reader: Christmas is a time when we often take stock of where we are and what we’ve done during the year. It’s a time for reconnecting with old friends, celebrating with family and for acknowledging that miracles really can happen. Some of us just need a little more help than others to believe. I hope you enjoy my sensual modern twist on a Christmas classic. Story Description: The last thing Cara Travers expected to find on her laptop as she settled in for a long Christmas Eve of managing stock portfolios and researching yield-high tech stocks was her former boss, Marley Jacobs. Especially since the woman has been dead for seven years. Marley has a message for Cara. Closing oneself off from love and passion in life adds up to misery in the afterlife. Doomed to walk alone, Marley tells Cara that it’s not too late for her to change her ways if she gets her head out of her butt, and that she will be visited by three ghosts. Cara is more than skeptical, sure that there was some kind of hallucinogenic mold growing on the microwaved chicken ala king she had for dinner. She shakes off the odd experience and goes to bed. But when one o’clock comes and a sexy ghost dressed in a white toga appears in her bedroom and takes her for a whirlwind tour of passions past, Cara begins to believe. They visit an old flame, her first love, and she experiences again all the passion and love she once felt. But Cara’s early years weren’t all beer and pizza and the ghost takes her to the point in her life when she sacrificed the love of a good man to further her career. Shaken by the experience, Cara is even more creeped-out when the ghost of passions present shows up in her shower later that night. A tall and brawny red-head, the ghost whisks her away to the Christmas wedding of two co-workers she had vehemently declined to attend. She also gets a peek inside the life of her hot next-door neighbor who just doesn’t seem to get the hint, no matter how many times Cara turns down his offers for dates. He’s eternally optimistic about the possibility of love and sees a side of Cara she herself doesn’t. She hears him telling a friend how much he likes her and when his thoughts turn to her, she is suddenly right there in his fantasies, making Christmas Eve anything but a silent night. Finally, the ghost of passions future arrives, a silent, hooded figure. He shows her a cold, lonely tomorrow in which her name graces the door of the President’s office of her firm, but her employees openly mock her for the miserable, cold-hearted woman she has become. She also sees the wedding couple from her previous vision fighting and the former bride throwing Cara’s own pessimistic notions of marriage in her husband’s face before walking out for good. Cara wakes on Christmas morning a changed woman. She goes about making amends, arranging for the wedding couple to have a luxurious island honeymoon. She also tracks down that hot next-door neighbor and gives him a special edition of the sappy Christmas video he said he liked so much. She asks if the invitation to the Christmas ball he earlier issued is still good. Cara has missed the ball, but the neighbor invites her in anyway. Cara finally accepts an invitation from him and finds that it really is a wonderful life.